I heard the other day that a new use had been found for aspirin. Aspirin has been found to do just about anything you can think of, so I cannot imagine what else could be attributed to it other than curing flat feet or a bad haircut, but apparently there is something.  It seems that the magic ingredient in aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid. Be sure to notice the acid part as we will talk more about it later.

When aspirin was discovered over a hundred years ago, it was considered a wonder drug, and it remains one of the most widely used drugs for relieving pain and fever. If it had been discovered in current times, it probably would require a prescription instead of being sold over the counter.

My honey takes a baby aspirin every day. People who are at risk are often advised by their doctor to take small daily doses of aspirin to thin their blood and prevent heart attack.

I couldn’t find anything newly discovered for aspirin on the Internet, but did find a bunch of stuff that I didn’t know about before. I had heard the old one about dissolving an aspirin in the vase before adding fresh flowers. Apparently aspirin acts on plants just like it does on my honey’s blood veins. It opens up the plant fibers and lets more fresh water get in to prevent wilting.

One that I had not heard of before was using aspirin on pimples and mosquito bites. Yes, you heard me right. You wet an aspirin and rub it on the bump. Since aspirin is an anti-inflammatory, it reduces the inflammation and helps it to heal quicker. And to think, I went through my entire adolescence thinking Clearasil was the way to go because Dick Clark said so.

A similar one is to use aspirin to stop bleeding if you nick yourself shaving. How aspirin can both thin blood and stop bleeding is beyond me. But the next time I nick myself on the ankle trying to shave my legs in the shower, I’ll try it and report back.

Aspirin is even supposed to be able to cure dandruff. You crumble up a couple and mix it with shampoo. Fortunately, I don’t have dandruff, which unfortunately means I will not get to try this one. It is the salicylic acid doing it’s thing again. The acid can kill fungus, which means aspirin is also good for athlete’s feet.

I don’t keep aspirin around much any more since they began finding all the negative things about it, like causing stomach ulcers and Reye’s syndrome in children. I always use Advil or Tylenol. I think everyone has a favorite pain reliever that they think is better that any of the million others on the drugstore shelf.

The main use of aspirin, of course, is for relief of pain. I recall hearing that holding an aspirin on an aching tooth would help. I suspect that the relief is more from the drug being swallowed than from anything it does to the tooth, but who knows? If it works on pimples, maybe it could work on an aching tooth. I didn’t try it when I had my dry socket. I used oil of cloves. Someone else can test this theory as I never want to go through that again.

One of the more interesting uses I found was that you can disolve aspirin and use it to remove prespiration stains by soaking the stain with it before laundering. I don’t know how I made it through life without knowing this one. I did know the one about lemon juice and rust stains, though. Probably the same principle, the acid.

Last but not least, some people recommend using aspirin to revive a dead car battery. The acid in a couple aspirin mixes with the battery acid and gives it enough juice to start one last time. Personally, I would recommend AAA for a dead battery unless you want to kill it permanently.

I think I forgot to mention that the main use of aspirin is to relieve the pain of a headache. That’s a really good thing to know as all this talk about aspirin is starting to give me one.

Copyright 2010 Sheila Moss